14 DAY TRIAL // Lady Gaga is really making an effort to convince the world that she’s not a fake and, most importantly, that she’s not copying Madonna with the music she recorded for her upcoming album, “Born This Way.” In her new interview with NME, the singer says God sent her the melody and lyrics for “Judas.”
Asked whether she found any inspiration in Madonna and her classic hit “Express Yourself” for any of the material on “Born This Way,” Lady Gaga goes on the defensive: she didn’t and she would never take something from another song unless she paid a direct homage to an artist.
“No. Listen to me. Why the [hell]...? I’m a songwriter. I’ve written loads of music. Why would I try to put out a song and think I’m getting one over on everybody? That’s retarded,” Lady Gaga says.
The very idea that she might take a song as popular as “Express Yourself” and basically rip it off in a bit to pass it for an original makes Gaga shudder. She’d never do that, she insists.
“What a completely ridiculous thing to even question me about. I will look you in the eyes and tell you that I am not dumb enough or moronic enough to think that you are dumb or moronic enough not to see that I would have stolen a melody,” she explains.
“If you put the songs next to each other, side by side, the only similarities are the chord progression. It’s the same one that’s been in disco music for the last 50 years. Just because I’m the first [expletive]-ing artist in 25 years to think of putting it on Top 40 radio, it doesn’t mean I’m a plagiarist. It means I’m [expletive]-ing smart. Sorry,” Gaga adds.
Asking questions like this means perpetuating the story that she did rip off Madonna’s song, Gaga admonishes the NME reporter – and it’s just not fair to her fans, she adds with tears in her eyes.
Also “welling up,” Gaga reveals the inspiration for “Judas,” the second single off the upcoming album (out on May 23) came from high above, from God Himself.
“I just have to say (Starts crying)... I feel like honestly that God sent me those lyrics and that melody,” the NME piece reads (all quotes via Oh No They Didn’t).
“When you feel a message to give to the world and people are shooting arrows through it... there’s no way for something that pure to be wrong. (Reaches for Marilyn Monroe lighter) I need a cigarette,” says the NME editorial.
For more on this, see here.